Carlos Saura, with more than 50 productions, was a highly innovative filmmaker who shaped the history of modern Spanish cinema, along with Buñuel, Almodóvar and Berlanga. From the films of the now deceased director, his unique and recognizable voice has always stood out, which, on occasions, entered little-traveled terrain.
It has been said of him that he psychoanalyzed Franco's Spain and the bourgeois family, but he also X-rayed the neighborhoods of working people, many coming from the rural world, with influences from Italian neorealism. Hurry, hurry (1981) is an example of that cinema, with which he won the Golden Bear in Berlin.
Carlos Saura's long career earned him great recognition at international festivals. We review some of those key titles from his filmography, his most awarded films that have marked milestones in the history of cinema.
The passage of time has been very good for this feature film that was released timidly almost 60 years ago and became a great success that came to influence a great Hollywood director, Sam Peckinpah. With this film about four friends whose hunting day turns into a nightmare, Saura dodged censorship and thrilled Berlin, which awarded him the Silver Bear for Best Director in 1966.
La caza, with a cast that includes Ismael Merlo, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Alfredo Mayo and José María Prada, raises issues such as the Civil War, the incipient Spain of the big ball, the sexual tyranny and sanctimoniousness of the dictatorship or the difficult survival of the friendship over the years.
This critique of the Spanish aristocracy of Francoism starring Fernando Fernán Gómez and Geraldine Chaplin tells the story of a young woman hired as a governess for some girls who live in a mansion with their parents, uncles and grandmother. The protagonist ends up having problems with the adults in her family, who are attracted to her. The film received three awards at the 29th edition of the Cinematographic Writers Circle Medals: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Cinematography.
This critical line of Spanish society, power and the Church, which shows the most visceral and selfish violence, machismo and lack of freedom behind the apparent normality of a well-to-do family that Saura films in Ana y los lobos had plot continuity in Mom Turns One Hundred Years (1979). In this title, he signs a metaphor for the Spain of the transition, since Ana reappears safe and sound and can reconcile with the family, which has not changed at all. This film received the special prize of the San Sebastian Festival Jury, an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, Best Screenplay at the Chicago Festival and three medals from the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos, for Best Film, Best Actress (Rafaela Aparicio). and best photography (Teo Escamilla).
Among Saura's award-winning films is this drama, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974. The feature film, an intricate narrative game with two realities starring José Luis López Vázquez, tells the story of a man who returns to his hometown to attend his mother's funeral. Once there, he recalls his childhood and adolescence, above all, the love he felt for his cousin Angélica, who is played by Lina Canalejas. On July 11, 1974, the now-defunct Balmes cinema in Barcelona, where the film was shown, suffered an attack by the extreme right.
Three years after The Spirit of the Beehive, by Vítor Erice, the girl Ana Torrent starred with Geraldine Chaplin, Saura's partner at the time, in a magnetic film that revolves around the turbulence of childhood and mother-child relationships. The girl believes she has power over the life and death of the people who live with her and her mother, the power to invoke the presence of the deceased grandmother.
Also remembered for its soundtrack, with Jeanette's Why Are You Leaving, the film won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1976, shared with Éric Rohmer's The Marquise d'O. In addition, it was nominated in the category of best foreign film at both the César Awards (1976) and the Golden Globes (1977).
They are about to celebrate 42 years since the presentation of Quick, quick at the Berlinale, where it won the Golden Bear. The film tells the story of a gang of juvenile delinquents, four friends from the Madrid suburbs of the transition, whose expectations are covered for easy money and drugs. With the film, Carlos Saura brought the stories of quinquis to auteur cinema.
Carlos Saura then assured that this film about juvenile delinquents had nothing to do with Los golfos, the feature film with which he debuted in 1959, centered on some friends from the Madrid suburbs who commit robberies to help another companion who wants to be a bullfighter. This tape aroused the anger of Franco's censorship when it was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. In this same contest, Saura met the filmmaker Luis Buñuel, with whom he made Crying for a Bandit.
This film, produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez, was awarded 13 statuettes at the 5th edition of the Goya Awards in 1991, including Best Film. The feature film is based on the play of the same name by José Sanchis Sinisterra and tells the harsh life in the rearguard of the Civil War of a married couple -Andrés Pajares and Carmen Maura- who are forced to act and entertain the audience with their variety show. who they consider their enemies.
In Saura's imagination, the wound of the Civil War has always been very present, told many times from the metaphor to avoid the censorship of the regime. His childhood was marked by the fratricidal conflict and he had to take refuge with his family in the republican areas of cities like Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia. Ay Carmela!, a film from the 1990s, is one of the few works by the director in which the war is presented openly, without resorting to metaphorical or allegorical representations.
